9 Governing ethnic unrest: Political Islam and NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY the Kurdish conflict in Turkey Onur Günay and Erdem Yörük Abstract How can we explain the mass appeal and electoral success of Islamist political parties? What are the underlying sources of the Islamist political advantage? Scholars have provided numerous answers to these widely debated questions, variously emphasizing the religious nature of the discourses in Islamist movements, their ideological hegemony, organizational capacity, provision of social services, reputation, and structural factors. However, one key aspect of Islamist movements has been underexplored in the current literature; namely, Islamists’ promises to resolve ethnic questions that remain unresolved in secularist nation-states. In this article, we argue that the extent to which Islamists govern ethnic unrest significantly shapes their electoral success and ability to establish broader hegemony. Based on ethnographic and sociological data, this article explores one particular recent electoral puzzle that reveals the limits of the scholarly literature on Islamist political advantage, examining the ethnic politics of the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) in Turkey. Keywords: Political Islam; elections; ethnic politics; Turkey; Kurds Department of Anthropology and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Relations, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, 08544; [email protected]. Department of Sociology, Koç University, Rumelifeneri Yolu 34450, Sarıyer, İstanbul, Turkey; Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Barnett House, 32–37 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2ER, UK; [email protected]. Authors’ Note: We would like to express our gratitude to João Biehl, Elizabeth A. Davis, Julia Elyachar, Burak Gürel, and Ali Sipahi for their insightful comments. We also benefited greatly from the com- ments and suggestions of the article’s anonymous reviewers, and we are thankful to them and to the editors of New Perspectives on Turkey for their editorial guidance. We are grateful to Konda Research and Consultancy for sharing their data with us. This study has been generously funded by the European Research Council, Grant No. 714868. New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 61 (2019): 9–43 © New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2019 10.1017/npt.2019.17 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 71.245.121.162, on 31 Oct 2019 at 20:13:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/npt.2019.17 10 Onur Günay and Erdem Yörük Introduction There has been immense scholarly interest in the mass appeal and electoral success of Islamist movements in the Muslim world. Scholars from various disciplines have offered various explanations for this multifaceted phenome- non, and indeed such a complex social phenomenon as Islamist success may admit of multiple explanations.1 Despite the abundance of interpreta- tions, however, the current literature fails to explain temporal variations in popular support for Islamists. The purpose of this article is to contribute NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY to the literature in this field by bringing the ethnic politics of Islamist move- ments into conversation with the existing explanations, thus helping us to bet- ter understand the temporal variation of Islamists’ success. To this end, we explore the rapid changes in the electoral performance of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) during the general elections held in June and November 2015. We argue that the success of the ruling AKP was conditioned by the party’s capacity to govern ethnic unrest. Specifically, the AKP promised to resolve the Kurdish problem, ini- tially through ethnic inclusion on the basis of Islamic solidarity and class-based populism, and later through repression and authoritarianism, appealing in each case to either Kurdish or nationalist Turkish constituencies. We deploy anthropological and sociological data and analyses to show that the success of Islamist mobilization and the political configuration of diverse electoral performances depend on the realization or failure of this promise. Ethnic politics: A missing link in the literature on Islamist political success The strong electoral performance of Islamists has convinced scholars from various disciplines that there is an “Islamist political advantage,” whereby Islamists are uniquely positioned and equipped to garner greater popular sup- port in comparison to other political movements. In explaining the rapid, par- allel, and global rise of political support for Islamist parties and movements, scholars typically have referred to the anti-Western position of Islamic parties, the religious nature of Islamist movements’ discourses, ideological hegemony, organizational capacity, provision of social services, reputation, and various structural factors, as well as the existence of a devout bourgeoisie. The first group of explanations for Islamists’ success builds on the discur- sive advantages, cultural repertoire, and ideological hegemony of Islamists. 1 See Tarek Masoud, Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 71.245.121.162, on 31 Oct 2019 at 20:13:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/npt.2019.17 11 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY These explanations put forth that Islamists gained power because they pre- sented themselves as a counterforce against Western hegemony.2 From this perspective, contemporary political Islam is not a revival of traditional Islamic values, but a product of modernity.3 Some scholars argue that Islamic politics attracts Muslims of different nations because the notion of an Islamic brotherhood erases national differences and provides a universal signifier—the ummah or Muslim community—in opposition to the alienating West.4 Others articulate a moderation hypothesis which asserts that a success- ful political moderation of radical claims enables Islamist parties to succeed in electoral politics.5 For some scholars, Islamists manage to successfully locate their political message within the community’s cultural codes and norms with- out imposing an external ethos.6 Although these accounts have significant explanatory power, they risk essentialism7 and reduce Muslim voters to what Sadik J. al-Azm has called “Homo Islamicus,” regardless of the historical and sociopolitical context.8 On the other hand, material explanations for the Islamist political advantage refer to growing poverty and inequality as the basis of the Islamists’ success. By promising to herald an era of justice, equality, and welfare, political Islam is seen by many as a significant counterforce to neocolonialism and corrupt regimes.9 2 Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” The Atlantic 266, no. 3 (1990): 47–60; Nikki R. Keddie, “The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to Imperialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 3 (July 1994): 463–487; Mohammed Ayoob, “Political Islam: Image and Reality,” World Policy Journal 21, no. 3 (2004): 1–14; John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,1992), 77–118. 3 Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, trans. Carol Volk (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994); Christopher Houston, “Civilizing Islam, Islamist Civilizing? Turkey’s Islamist Movement and the Problem of Ethnic Difference,” Thesis Eleven 58, no. 1 (1999): 83–98. 4 Abdullah Al-Ahsan, Ummah Or Nation?: Identity Crisis in Contemporary Muslim Society (Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1992); Ali Mohammed Naqvi, Islam and Nationalism, trans. Alaedin Pazargadi (Tehran: Islamic Propagation Organization, 1984). 5 Manfred Brocker and Mirjam Künkler, “Religious Parties Revisiting the Inclusion-Moderation Hypothesis 1: Introduction,” Party Politics 19, no. 2 (2013): 171–186; Sarah Wilson Sokhey and A. Kadir Yıldırım, “Economic Liberalization and Political Moderation: The Case of Anti-System Parties,” Party Politics 19, no. 2 (2013): 230–255; Mehmet Gürses, “Islamists, Democracy and Turkey: A Test of the Inclusion-Moderation Hypothesis,” Party Politics 20, no. 4 (2014): 646–653; Güneş Murat Tezcür, Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey: The Paradox of Moderation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010). 6 Jenny B. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002). 7 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 80; Lisa Wedeen, “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science,” American Political Science Review 96, no. 4 (December 2002): 713–728. 8 Sadik J. Al-Azm, “Is Islam Secularizable?” Journal for the Critical Study of Religion 2 (1997): 83–90. 9 Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London and New York: Routledge, 2003); Salwa Ismail, “The Paradox of Islamist Politics,” Middle East Report 221 (2001): 34–39; Esposito, The Islamic Threat. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 71.245.121.162, on 31 Oct 2019 at 20:13:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/npt.2019.17 12 Onur Günay and Erdem Yörük Some argue that Islamism has replaced